To be a woman is a wonderful thing. We live in full color, full, intertwined, sometimes blurry, sometimes crystal-clear COLOR, & it’s an intensity that is unique to our perspective.

Or maybe that’s just me, and maybe my crazy is showing.

It comes with drawbacks, this intensity. You feel everything so deeply: love, hate, joy, rejection. You have to learn how to control how much you let certain things affect you. When someone loves you, you reciprocate with your entire heart…but then you realize they’re witholding, & you’ve overplayed your deck. You don’t feel s….l….o…w…l….y. You loveFastAndFuriously.

And sometimes,

You break into a million pieces.

You heal…and then you do it again…and it happens again…and you heal again, maybe a little more slowly this next time….and it happens again…and you…heal…again….a little more slowly….yet again…more slowly…

And the scars meld together.

People love with such reservation…but we don’t want to,  because we’re not MADE to. The world preaches love in the light of narcissism: You will love me MY way. We don’t know how to love someone outside of ourselves, so we are selfish in how we give and in how we receive love. And when two people in a relationship only focus on how they receive love, and forget to ask the other person how THEY receive love, dissonance occurs.

It’s like living in a household playing an endless loop of the audio of nails running down a chalkboard.

You’re endlessly annoyed with each other. You bait each other. Course jesting takes the place of conversation to the point that you can’t even look at each other, and your relationship becomes governed by the remote control and your calendar of events, where you will smile & look lovely, but internally contemplate an impactless life together. Is this all there is?

And the scars meld together.

Marriage is an institution with the possibility of incredible impact. Two people who love Jesus,  and love each other? They can send thousands to flight, and change the atmosphere of a nation. Satan knows this, so he destroys marriages.

Just because you live in the same house, doesn’t mean your marriage isn’t destroyed.

However…

As long as you are in that same house, there is hope (unless there’s an abusive situation—then get the heck OUT. DO NOT try to salvage an abusive relationship without intensive professional help!!!).

Now, this blog isn’t about marriage (maybe it is); rather, it’s about LOVE, and how as women, we desire so strongly to be deeply, deeply loved.  I don’t know much about the uniqueness of men & love. I would like to think that my husband believes I love him, even when we’re spatting about something (which we currently are). I feel like he’s much better at letting things roll off of him, whereas I will stay angry for a week (which I currently am). Along with that, though,  when I say nice things to him, he also lets THAT roll off of him, so it can be very, very difficult for me to know what I’ve said to him that’s registered, that stays with him. I think that finding out HOW to communicate ANYTHING to your spouse is a lifelong struggle for men AND women, much less, finding out how to LOVE them. And the two go hand-in-hand.

I am not the type to tell someone directly what I want for Christmas.  I prefer to drop hints, to see if they listened. It’s manipulative, really: I will judge how well  you know me by the accuracy of your gift. I’m being really, reaaaaaally genuine here. I’m not saying this is a good trait–it’s probably not. But I listen & I watch, & I put a great deal of thought into gifts, because the accuracy of how well I know you is in that little box. I am pursuing your affections by showing you how well I have paid attention to you, and I expect the same.

There’s an example of narcissistic love.  I love how I want to be loved. I love with communication, with an attention to detail, and that’s how I receive love.

But maybe my husband isn’t that way.

And that’s not a bad thing…but it is a mystery I have to unravel, & I have to have patience in the pursuit of that process.

I can’t give up on figuring out how to love him, even when I come to a frustrating standstill.

God never gives up on loving us, on pursuing us, on chasing us down and relentlessly fighting for our affections. He never, ever stops.

I get frustrated. David gets frustrated. We bicker, we spat, we volley for control. We can’t stand to be apart, but we hurt each other when we’re together, but we’re best friends/frenemies, but we really do love each other, but we will never be separated, because God put us together, but that doesn’t mean it’s always smooth sailing, but it doesn’t mean it’s NOT.

But

He

Never

Stops.

I’ve told David before that I’ve been frustrated to the point of thinking about taking a break. What I actually meant is that I want to be PURSUED. I want to feel worthy in his eyes of being pursued again, like I did in those early days….pursued with romance,  with words. That didn’t happen, but again, that’s a narcissistic love. Security generally means there is no NEED to chase; there is only a WANT to be chased, so why ask your spouse to play games?

I will say this, though, with such absolute joy: Our Jesus never stops pursuing us. He values us, He covets our love, and He relentlessly, recklessly, past the point of reason, deeply pursues us to pursue Him. “Further up, and further in.”

We keep singing the song, “Reckless Love ” at our church.  It’s a popular one right now,  and I am here for it. It’s everything I want in a relationship–it’s the pursuit of the Beloved and how He never stops.  He’s not side-tracked; He isn’t blocked. He faces no obstacle in how He chases us. He is CONSTANT. He’s not like us as people…He isn’t detoured by emotion or mental state, or bad hair days, or financial crises. HE LOVES US, and He never, ever stops.

Like, I can’t wrap my head around it. Everything I need as a person, as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, is there in His reckless pursuit of me, and of you.  There’s no communication breakdown that takes it away,  there’s no “writer’s block” that stops it from coming. His love is a runaway train, and when it catches you?

You’re shaken to your core.

You’re undone.

I’m undone.

I can’t process what He does, or Who He is…it’s like getting shattered into fractals, it’s like the sun exploded into your brain…it’s like every circuit that makes you who you are, overloads and short-circuits into a trillion galaxies.

It’s like a molecule of Heaven blew up in your brain.

That

Is

The

Love

Of

God.

And it chases after ME.